


clues in my pockets and opening boxes

by formercongressman



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, dental surgery recovery, do not be fooled! this is not fluff!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 23:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19756279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formercongressman/pseuds/formercongressman
Summary: In which Brooke makes a call and Vanessa’s heart cracks open too easily.





	clues in my pockets and opening boxes

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I know I should be working on malamente but I gotta give the people what they want, and that’s dentistry fic. Thanks to Meggie for betaing and to everyone enabling me to ignore my real world work. Title from Missing U by Robyn.

The first thing Brooke does when he’s conscious enough to remember how to work his phone to go live on Instagram, because his first love will always be attention from complete strangers. The second thing he does, though, is try to Facetime Vanessa.

It’s been a while since they’ve talked. Vanessa knows it’s because they’ve both been busy. Or, at least, that’s an easier thing to think about than it being a natural consequence of growing apart. They’re both casually seeing other people, more wrapped in other people’s lives than each others’ for once. And eventually that thought won’t hurt, but Vanessa can’t quite manage it yet. 

That’s why he picks up.

Facetime makes that whoosh noise, and Brooke almost seems to echo it as he gasps dramatically and brings a hand up to his (swollen?) face. His voice is a little bit musical and a little bit drunken sailor as he slurs, “You picked uuuup! Hiiiii!”

Brooke’s smiling, and it catches Vanessa off guard. He looks happy, fully blissed out, and it’s a version of Brooke he hasn’t seen in quite a while. “Hey,” he answers, confused.

“Oh, this is good! This is so _good_. Hiiiiiii,” Brooke waves at him and it’s mostly wrist. He’s all giggly and sweet like when he’s tequila drunk, but it’s 11 a.m. on a Tuesday.

“Bitch, where are you?” The screen is blurry because Brooke’s connection is always shit, but the walls look white and sterile from what he can tell. 

Brooke seems confused, and looks over his shoulder at a woman leaning over a sink behind him. “I’m so sorry, you just told me, but where am I again?”

“The dentist, in Nashville. You just got your wisdom teeth out.”

“I’m at the dentist in Nashville and I just got my wisdom teeth out,” Brooke dutifully repeats, smiling wide. Which would probably be a bit painful, but--

“Oh shit, you’re stoned. You’re _dentist_ stoned.” Vanessa hides his smile behind his hand just a little, and tucks his legs underneath him on the couch.

“Mmmmhm!” Brooke smiles, like he’s proud. “Your hair looks pretty all light like that, did I tell you that yet?”

Vanessa bites his lip to keep his cheeks from flushing. “No, you didn’t.”

“I should have, I’m sorry.” Brooke maneuvers the camera a bit.

“Look at you, still trying to find that good light.” Vanessa clicks his tongue in fake-disapproval.

“I feel so beautiful.” Brooke stretches out each word and Vanessa can’t help but smile. It’s more than that, he’s beaming. “Do you think I got extra beautiful?”

“You got extra _something_.” Vanessa thinks he’s extra dopey and loose, like the Brooke who curled around him in that hotel room in Chicago a year ago to the day, before the anxiety crept back into his shoulders and made things too messy to keep it going. 

“I’m gonna get to eat ice cream for days. I wish you were here with me.”

Vanessa bites his lip because he doesn’t want to want that. But he’s human and he has no self-restraint, so yeah he imagines himself cooking Brooke soup, rewatching _Schitt’s Creek_ with him for the fourth time, and playing with those stupid blond curls as he drifts in and out of sleep. And _fuck_ , that would be easy. _Fuck_ , that would be nice. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? We can get ice cream then.”

“Tomorrow? What’s tomorrow?”

“We’re back on tour, bitch! Did you really have surgery the day before you supposed to dance your ass off with all of us?”

“Oh noooo, am I not going to be able to dance?” Brooke looks legitimately distraught.

And Vanessa has a thing for sad puppies something fierce, because he’s saying, “No, no, baby, I’m sure you can still dance,” all sweet before he can really think it through. 

“Okay, okay, I trust you, I trust you.” He sighs dramatically, flops his head back against the surgery chair. “You’re so good to me." 

Vanessa’s still fucked. This dumbass on the other side of the screen has an iron grip on his heart that he can ignore as hard as he wants, but it sure isn’t going anywhere soon. He’ll admit it to himself but nobody else, a painful but necessary secret to keep.

“You got somebody there to pick you up?” he asks finally. 

“Yeah, my friend is coming, and she should be here--”

“She’s here now,” the nurse behind Brooke says. “How about you hang up the phone and I’ll help you walk to the lobby?”

“No, no, don’t wanna hang up yet,” Brooke pouts. Vanessa can see the look the nurse is giving him over his shoulder, and oh, she is _done_.

“No, I better go. I gotta go pack for tomorrow. Don’t fall on that fine ass of yours, okay?”

“No more flirting. That was your rule.” Brooke’s face twists into some combination of a faux-stern glare and absolute joy. Vanessa can’t take him seriously, even though he’s right. 

“Be careful, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Brooke tries to blow him a kiss, and it’s a bit of a failure, but just as effective. “Bye, baby, I love you.”

It’s been three weeks, two days, and roughly 11 hours since they’ve said that to each other. Not like Vanessa is counting. 

“I love you,” Vanessa says softly, and it feels like spikes coming out of his throat as he says it, even though it’s true. 

The app closes, and Vanessa is back in his apartment, on his couch, alone. 

He breathes. _Fuck_. 

He throws his phone on his bed for a little bit, covers it with dresses and wigs as he scrambles to pack for the tour, and doesn’t look at again for a couple more hours when he’s really scrambling to get his shit together to make it to the airport in time.

His screen is a flurry of missed notifications but there’s only one that matters.

B: _Oh fuck did I call you_

B: _Please tell me you didn’t pick up_

B: _I have no memory of that_

Of course, of course, of course.

V: _oh I picked up_

V: _and you were all messy and drugged up and shit_

V: _even more into yourself than usual_

The next messages come quick, a small grace.

B: _Ugh_

B: _I’m sorry for anything high me said_

B: _I didn’t mean it_

(Yeah, that one hurts like a motherfucker)

V: _it’s ok, you were sweet_

He changes that last word a couple times before sending it. _Nice, cute, funny_ , they all seem wrong. Sweet is wrong too, nothing’s going to be right, and Vanessa is already getting used to that. 

V: _still gonna get you that ice cream though_

Vanessa misses his flight to Boston. Part of him wants to blame Brooke, but it’s really the traffic.

There’s a lot of things he wants to blame Brooke for. It might not be Brooke’s fault Vanessa’s got an always-open hole in his heart, but Brooke sure doesn’t make it easy to patch it back together.

**Author's Note:**

> your comments mean more than you can imagine!! thanks for reading!!


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